Corpsing

by Toby Litt

  My penis is fairly far from harm, thank the Lord. And my spine – my spine isn’t as endangered as it might be.

  Where I lose out is in the guts, the digesting area. The front bits go – those more peripheral and less protected by the body’s self-defensive evolution.

  We, as humans, are sea-creatures – liquid, eminently squishable. If you examine enough photos of gunshot wounds, there is one easy conclusion: the human body is not made of hard things like bone and tough things like muscle, it is made of fifty-five jellyfish, all piled on top of each other, waiting to meet a bullet and become overt. All human insides are longing to fulfil their jellyfish vocation and get into the open air.

  82

  After I’d shot Dorothy, I stood and watched as she crumpled up. She did this in a completely unstagey way – there was no affectation to it, she simply folded herself over until she was as small as she could be. She didn’t make much sound, only a low repetitive grunting as she tried to breathe. At the time I suppose I noticed there was no blood spurting out of her. (The police, on top of all their less successful precautions, had equipped both Alun and Dorothy with bulletproof vests.) But I thought she was dead, anyway. Later, I learnt that the impact of that first bullet against her ribcage had sent Dorothy’s heart into arrhythmia. While I stood there, deciding whether or not I could be bothered to keep shooting, whether it wasn’t already finished, Dorothy had gone into cardiac arrest. I wanted to keep shooting. Really, I did. The second bullet, I knew, had to be aimed at her forehead. The third, at her belly. Then I had to start on Alun: heart, head, belly; four, five, six; chest, miss, guts. But Dorothy’s face was down, now – her head, resting on an empty white plate. All I could see of her was her hair. The only sound in the room was her grunting-breathing.

  In the next moment, Alun had put his arms around her and blocked her out of my view completely.

  He called her name.

  And as I stood there, all vengefulness gone, all interest in life gone, one of the policemen lunged at me.

  Yes, I had disarmed them. Their weapons still lay in a rough pile on the floor. But, silly me, I’d told them to pick up the knives and forks. And this one brave policeman had decided to improvise.

  He jumped up from his table and grabbed me from behind. With his right arm, he pulled the revolver away from Alun and Dorothy; with his left hand, he stabbed me in the guts with a fork.

  The pain was minimal. But I had nothing left to do. This was the easiest way out.

  I let go of Michael, dropped both guns and fell to the floor.

  The rest of the police were on me in seconds.

  83

  Ha ha ha.

  They took Dorothy and me to University College Hospital in the same ambulance.

  84

  Afterwards, when she visited me at UCH, but nowhere near as clearly and directly as this that follows, Vicky said:

  ‘Dorothy was foolish. Sub Overdale put her in touch with Tony Smart. Through Tony she met up with some minor villains. Through them, she was introduced to some seriously nasty people. She arranged everything with them, weeks in advance. She never met the actual hitman. All she was waiting for was an opportunity. When she found out that Alun and Lily were going out to dinner, she called the contact number she’d been given. It was a mobile phone. Stolen. She spoke to a man. She says she doesn’t know who it was. We’re almost certain it was the hitman. She told him where he’d find Lily and Alun. Le Corbusier. Eight o’clock. “Kill them,” she said. The price was far above the going rate. She was being swizzed. And then she went to Alun and told him, “I’ve arranged to have you killed – you know I can do it: we know the right people, now. The very next time you see Lily – and you’re intending to see her tomorrow evening, I know – the very next time, you will be gunned down. Even if you cancel this date, and see her again some other time, I’ll have you killed then. Both of you – or just her – I don’t know.” And so Alun got scared. He wanted Dorothy to tell him it was all a joke, all empty threats. So she played him a tape she’d made of some of the phonecalls she’d made to the hitman. Everything’s on the tapes. But Alun still didn’t believe it was really happening. He thought Dorothy had got some actor to do a scary East End voice down the phone. So then Dorothy hands him the phone and tells him Dial this number. The hitman answers. All it needed was for him to hear that voice, the same as on the tape. He tries to put the hitman off, but Dorothy grabs the phone from him. They get into a big fight, tearing at each other. Eventually, Alun starts crying. He promises never to see Lily again. This is all taking place in their flat, by the way. Dorothy gets Alun to phone Lily up – to tell her that it is all over, for ever. She is listening as he says it. Alun doesn’t say why, he just says that it’s over. “I’ve got to see you,” Lily says. “I have something to tell you.” Dorothy screams into the phone. “You’re never going to see him again! He’s mine!” She slams the phone down. Dorothy is satisfied. She phones the hitman to cancel the hit. She agrees to pay him a quarter of the promised money for his trouble. Then she goes off to the theatre. She was in a play by Ibsen. Alun remained at home. Dorothy thought she could trust him. She thought that he was all hers again. That she’d won him back. But as soon as she’s out the door, Alun phones Lily. He tells Lily that the thing he wants most in the world is to carry on seeing her. But he can’t. He tells her that Dorothy is going mad. That she’s arranged to have them killed. Lily doesn’t believe it. She wants to see Alun again. He says it’s impossible. Lily insists. She tells Alun she loves him. She tells him that she’s pregnant with his child. He doesn’t believe her. She tells him again. She says she’ll kill herself if she can’t be with him. He panics. He says it really is over. Even if Dorothy hadn’t done this, it would be over. Alun puts the phone down on her. Next morning, Friday, Lily calls Laurence. His is the disconnected number on Lily’s bill. 09.15. Remember? At that point he had a phone-socket in his room. It was a birthday present, so he could plug in his modem. He only got a phone later – which was why Lily used to call him on his parent’s number. After all this happened, his parents had the line disconnected. So, anyway, Lily calls Laurence and they talk about what’s been going on. He’s pissed off because Dorothy’s told him that he can never see Lily again either. No explanation. All he knows is that his parents had a real big argument the night before. Lily asks where they are. Laurence says they’re in rehearsal. They don’t know he’s home. He’s bunking off school. Lily says she’s coming round. When she arrives, Laurence has something to show her. After the argument the night before, he saw his mother putting some tapes in the dustbin. When she’s not looking, he gets them out, takes them to his room and plays them. Not only that, he plays one of them down the phone – so that the recording of the touch-tone automatically dials the number. At the same time, the number is displayed on the handset. He writes the number down. He hears the voice on the tape. When Lily comes round, he shows her the number. She, of course, commits it to memory. They talk for a while and then she goes. It is about eleven o’clock in the morning. She gets a taxi and calls the hitman’s number from her mobile. When the hitman answers, she starts to talk to him as if she were Dorothy. You know how good she was at impressions. Well, she has Dorothy down to a T. She tells the hitman that things are to go ahead exactly as planned. Last night, she says, she had a bit of a wobble. But now she’s certain that she wants it done. And to prove it, she’ll pay twice as much as she was going to before. The hitman is a bit dubious, but he accepts this. Lily ends the phonecall. She is, I imagine, very pleased. She is going to achieve everything she wants: she will be dead, you will be dead, Alun will be grief-stricken and Dorothy will have both the police and the hitman after her for the rest of her life. And so Lily, knowing now that she is going to die that evening, goes ahead and arranges things. She has her hair done. She buys a new dress – the same dress she wore to her last date with Alun. She phones you and arranges for you to come to the restaurant. You’re the easy part. She knows that you’re s
till in love with her and would cancel anything to see her again. She phones her mother to tell her about the baby and the abortion. She phones her solicitor to ask about changing her will. She doesn’t want the money and the flat left to you, as they were originally. Nor does she want to die intestate, and have her possessions divided equally between her parents. What she wants is to ensure that everything goes to her mother. But there isn’t time for that. So, she just has to let it slide. If both you and her are going to be dead, it doesn’t really matter anyway. You’re the one she blames for all of this. You made her pregnant. You made Alun leave her. She hates you. You’ve ruined everything. She phones your answerphone. I’ll play you the tape.’

  85

  Lily says:

  ‘It’s all your fault, he won’t – Alun won’t – have me any more and it’s all because of you and your fucking baby, which I’m no way going to have, you know: I’m not even going to fucking be alive in an hour’s time, bastard. What did you think was going to happen? I don’t care if they hear this. We were crap, you know. I never loved you. Not like I love Alun. I want someone to know that. Hello?! When you hear this. Ahem, of course you’re not going to hear it, Conrad. Because you’re going to be fucking dead. You’re going to be dead with me – and it’s all going to come back to Dorothy. But it’s all you, really. I want you to die. I just hope I get to see you die. Cunt. Cunt. Cunt. That’s what I think of you. You talentless little fucking shit-shit. Oh, what’s the point. Conrad, you cunt –’

  86

  Vicky continued:

  ‘And so, in the evening, Lily turns up at the restaurant – looking wonderful. You’re full of hope that this is the reconciliation. You go to the table. And, as arranged, the hitman comes in and gives you three shots each. Lily dies, you don’t. Next thing Alun and Dorothy hear is that Lily has been shot – and you, too. They read about it in the paper. Imagine how Dorothy feels: she’d arranged this thing; she’d cancelled it; but it had somehow gone ahead. She’s a murderer. And imagine how Alun feels: he spoke to Lily again, after promising Dorothy he wouldn’t. He suspects what happened. He suspects Lily rearranged the hit. And what about Laurence? He knows from the tapes all about what his mother had planned. He also knows that Lily came round that morning and that he gave her the hitman’s number. The police have already caught the hitman, but he tells us nothing. He’s just some hotshot – wanting to show that he can get away with anything, wanting to earn a reputation. Eventually, we get to Alun and Dorothy. We bring them in for questioning. They tell us everything. Alun tries to cover up for himself. Neither of them knows about Laurence. But we already know that Dorothy isn’t really responsible. We have the message that Lily left on your answerphone. The one you’ve just heard. We have Lily’s diaries – which tell the whole story. (The sniffer dogs found them in her secret hiding-place. They also found her drug stash.) We’ve talked to Lily’s parents. We already know that Lily rearranged the whole thing. But if we arrest and charge Dorothy, we fuck everything else up. You see, what we’re really interested in is the people that Tony Smart helped put Dorothy in touch with. The real villains. Technically, Dorothy isn’t even a murderer. It was conspiracy to, but even then she called it off. Lily was guilty of plotting your murder. We can’t charge her. We have the hitman himself. He’s going down. But we know that the whole thing was a set-up from the start. The hitman’s boss thought he had a dangerous one on his hands. So he let him go along with Dorothy’s mad plan for shooting someone in the middle of a crowded restaurant. He knew the stupid idiot would get caught. He wanted him banged up in prison. He was too much of a liability outside. And all this time, while you were trying to put the blame on someone other than Lily, we’ve been trying to get to him. The boss. And we were almost there. All we needed was for Dorothy to agree to drop him in it. She was keeping quiet. She was terrified of him. It was only when you kidnapped Laurence that she agreed to help. In the end, you helped us. That was one of the reasons we didn’t arrest you. But that was a whole other mess. No-one was telling me anything. I didn’t know about James. I certainly didn’t know that they were selling you guns and blank bullets. That was a completely different operation. They were desperate to keep you quiet. You see, if you made any noise, then we’d have to arrest Dorothy – and that would be her gone as a witness. They thought the best way to do that was to watch you discreetly, via James. They were so close to getting to the hitman’s boss. Days away from having enough to arrest him. Then, when they noticed that his men, the albino and the other guy, were following you, they thought that might be a useful connection. But then some rival gang got wise and started following them (and you) around. They were hoping to fuck the whole thing up and get the boss arrested. That would be him out of the way and them home free. It was the albino and the other guy who chucked the paint on your door and the brick through your window. It was them that did Tony. But as soon as their boss knew we had Dorothy, he was on your side. He’d had Dorothy closely watched the whole time. It was Asif who torched your flat. He was so fucking pissed off at losing his job, he wanted to do something to get back at you. I sympathize with him, really. Though all this has actually been rather good for my career. Grace under pressure, that’s what the Chief Inspector called it. So, anyway, there you are – running round, causing all this chaos. Half the time you’re really useful to us – because you’re putting the wind up Dorothy and bringing her nearer to helping us; half the time you’re a real pain in the arse – buying guns, buying bullets. But there were guys at the station who’ve been after this boss practically their whole careers. He was their school. And they were prepared to do almost anything to get him. So, when James found out what you were after, they set up the bloke in the pub. You got the gun you wanted, with blanks. Then you found out they were blanks, so they sold you some more. It was all going to work out fine, until you managed – completely by accident – to get hold of that real revolver. Before then, of course, you’d disappeared from view. That was my fault. I didn’t tell anyone about Anne-Marie until late on. I couldn’t believe she’d be stupid enough to go on seeing you. Then there was the business with the bike. Your friend the albino died, you know. Right there on the street. You could have ended up in serious trouble if we hadn’t known what we were about: the ballistics of the gun you used to shoot Dorothy exactly matched those of the gun used in the shooting of the albino – and in several other unrelated incidents. Some also fatal. Anyway, then you went off and used Michael to get into the restaurant. We didn’t know you knew him. And then you shot Dorothy. You stupid idiot! If we hadn’t put her in a bulletproof vest, she would have died. Luckily for you, she didn’t. She won’t be able to act again, though. You completely fucked her ribcage. But at least she’s around to speak at the various trials that are going to be happening. As will I. As will my new best friend Anne-Marie. As will you. Unfortunately. With Dorothy’s testimony, together with Tony’s and Laurence’s, and a whole lot of circumstantial stuff, we now have enough to bring the hitman’s boss to trial – and to have him convicted. That’s what we were waiting for all along: the evidence needed to make a complete case. It’s what they call corpus delicti.’

  87

  A couple of weeks into my second stay at UCH, I got one of the nurses to bring me a phone. From my hospital bed, with the curtains drawn all around me, without really knowing what I was intending to say, I called Lily’s flat. After listening to my own voice on the answerphone (‘I’m sorry no-one’s here at the moment please leave a message and we’ll get back to you…’) I began to speak. Not exactly to Lily. Not exactly to myself. But not exactly to anyone else either. This, or something like it, is the message I left:

  ‘It’s probably a bit mad, but I know you’re still really there. I’ve been trying to work out whether, in all this time, you haven’t been more alive than me. In some ways, at least. You certainly changed more than I did – than I allowed myself to. As far as I can see, you’re a completely different person to the one I thought I knew. A
lmost, anyway. And even her, I didn’t know very well. That’s partly because you spent most of the time we were together lying to me and partly because I’ve spent most of the time since then lying to myself. I think I knew. Really, in most ways, I think I knew the whole thing. But there I was, just going on with it – letting you work out your revenge on me, through me. I feel like I’ve been chasing – I don’t know what I feel like I’ve been chasing. A ghost, I suppose. I don’t like that word. It’s not vicious enough for what you are. You’re something else. You’re more like, what? A bullet. Harmless enough by itself, held in the palm. But when following its trajectory, as you continued following yours, it’s pretty fucking lethal. Just by not being alive, you’ve done so much damage. I wasn’t going to say I hate you. That seems so obvious. Of course I hate you – how could I not hate you? But, now I think about it, I think I probably hated you all along. It wasn’t you doing all this to me, I was doing it to myself. You might say that you knew that was going to happen, but you didn’t. You wanted me dead. The people that you wanted merely punished have been – or will be, pretty soon. But I’m still here, you know. I’m still here… Oh, fuck it… I’m bored with this.’

  Even before I put the phone down I was already in hysterics.

  88

  That’s what I remember saying.

  But it may not be completely accurate because when I went along to Lily’s flat a few weeks later to start clearing all her stuff out, the message hadn’t been properly recorded.

  When I tried to play it back, all I could hear was the cackle-crackle of far-off static.